


The Letter of Marque (words and silence)

by feroxargentea



Category: Master and Commander - All Media Types
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-11
Updated: 2010-08-11
Packaged: 2017-10-14 10:06:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/148104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feroxargentea/pseuds/feroxargentea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The beginning of chapter 7 of The Letter of Marque, slightly re-written for esteven, who was saddened by too much pain and not enough comfort. An attempt to spell out the lines between the lines, making plain what was already as plain as day. All the dialogue and much of the rest is from the original. SPOILERS for Letter of Marque.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Letter of Marque (words and silence)

“Come, sir, you must go below at once,” said Pullings, holding him firmly. “Bonden, give me a hand.”

Jack could not resist: he let them ease him down into the brightly-lit orlop, where Stephen and Martin were each dealing with a wounded man. He sat on a rolled-up hammock, crouching in the only position that gave any relief. To call for attention out of turn was unthinkable, but Stephen, glancing swiftly up from his suturing, noted Jack’s increasing pallor and cried out for Bonden to catch him as he fell from consciousness.

When he was fully aware again he was lying naked on the bloody canvas-covered chests with Stephen and Martin examining the small of his back.

“It is not there that it hurts,” he said in a surprisingly strong voice. “It is in my goddam leg.”

“Nonsense, my dear,” said Stephen, in a tone light enough to deceive anyone who knew him little. “That is only referred pain from the great sciatic. We are on the very spot itself. It is a pistol-ball lodged between two vertebrae.” He tapped the lumbar region gently, noting the lack of localised pain-response. The ball was no more than an inch from the spinal cord, but pain in the thigh ruled out any lesion of the cord itself. Lasting damage to the sciatic nerve was not improbable, the pain of which might drive the sunniest temper to cross-grainedness, and by his patient’s parchment-like pallor the risk of fatality from uncontrollable haemorrhage was yet considerable, but visions of a paraplegic Jack receded. A man might live with the loss of a leg, but he could never sail with the loss of two.

“There? I thought that was the kick of a horse – nothing much at the time.”

“We are all of us fallible.” Stephen’s tone was still light, and the grimace twisting his lips was almost a smile; he was perfectly aware that neither Jack nor Martin was fooled. This foolish irrational fatuous notion that pain could be transferred by contact was nothing but superstitious absurdity, yet the urge to touch Jack’s shoulder was almost overwhelming. “Now listen, Jack, will you? We must have it out directly, and then with the blessing all will be well, but when my probe reaches the ball and shifts it there will be a very great deal of pain, more than your body can bear without moving; so I must fasten you down. The strong pain will not last long.”

With barely a tremor in his Mahon-crabbed hands, though the last dose of his beneficent tincture had been nearly a full day since, he took his long-nosed crow-billed forceps, adjusted his spectacles, and pressed open the edges of the wound.

***

“There, my dear,” said Stephen. “It is all over. The ball came away charmingly: if it had not, I should not have given a great deal for your leg.” Giddiness from relief and fatigue alike lent an odd air of levity to his tone: Jack’s pallor was shocking, but two dozen sutures had stemmed the haemorrhage from the cutlass-slashes and the pistol-ball had been extracted without injury to the spinal cord or any apparent lesion of the sciatic nerve.

The man before him, his patient and most intimate friend, would sleep, and wash the blood from his sweat-darkened hair, and walk, and live.

“Thankee, Stephen,” said Jack. Their eyes met briefly; no more need be said.

Stephen inhaled sharply and glanced around the orlop, his duty as a physician overriding any other inclination. A dozen casualties, French and British both, were hunched against the bulwarks. Not all would see out the night.

“Padeen, let you and Bonden bear the Captain away on this sheet. He is not to be bent, but to be laid flat in his cot. Next case.”

Martin beckoned to a gasping figure in the uniform of a French quartermaster, whose blood came welling frothily from his mouth at each breath.

***

Hours later in the middle watch, his final patient sutured and bandaged, Stephen took a lantern and headed for Jack’s cabin, weaving a little from exhaustion.

“Dear Stephen,” said Jack, and his teeth gleamed in the half-darkness, “I really thought I had lost the number of my mess that bout. I scarcely noticed it at the time and then all at once I was a-dying; or so I supposed.”

It could not be beneficial for a patient to know how close to death he had been, to contemplate his own mortality, and for Stephen to contemplate Jack’s death was impossible, unbearable, and need no longer be borne. He pressed Jack’s hand gently.

“The pain must have been very great indeed, I am sure, but with the ball gone you have no more to fear.” He was too tired for any attempt to conceal the affection in his voice. “If you will drink this, compose your mind, and go to sleep, you will feel somewhat better even tomorrow morning.”

The laudanum drunk, Stephen waited until Jack slept, and then held Jack’s hand to his face. A foolish simple-minded supposition, indeed, this cutaneous transfer of dolor, that one could take another’s pain by simple contact, but it could not be denied that comfort could be so conveyed. Stephen leant his cheekbone against the callused fingers, and began to doze.


End file.
